There are few books I have given more often as a present to friends, male and female, than “Older, but better, but Older” by Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas. This book everybody should read, and I bet everybody would laugh out loud sometimes.
That you are getting closer to the age of 40 or 50 is something your passport keeps reminding you stubbornly, but has nothing to do with the age you have in your head and the life you live or the way you look. We still carry the perception that was often true 60 to 100 years ago, when life expectancy was much less. Life in general was harder and with less common luxuries than today. Back then, a woman was getting “old” with 40, losing the main function society gave her with child bearing and child raising. Of course, women found themselves worthy activities when their children left home and some even defied societies ideas and never had children, but a job. Or both. Whilst back then this was the minority and was seen as an exception, it is standard today. Women work and have children, sometimes both, sometimes not. No one in the Western world honestly thinks a person over 40 is not useful any more. We have to work till our 60s at least – no chance to stop being active.
Women after 40 are in the same situation as men were since a much longer time – one approaches 40 or 50 and is active and needed by society – but one does not feel young anymore. You cannot pretend to be 20, you need to eat less to not get fat, you need to do more sport to keep the body more or less lithe, you fall ill more often and recover slower and so on. Reality kicks in – half one’s life is over.
I tend to count the first 15 years as not too helpful, because most of them you can not make own decisions. This might happen again when over 75 or 80 – a big fear, deep in us all, that the brain loses its power. But still, the years from 40 to at least 75 should be the best of our lives! That said, we are not young anymore when approaching 40 or 50. The youth craze of fashion and TV has done us bad here – most women don’t even want to be 20 again (although quite a few men do, from what I gather from male friends).
But back to our book: I almost didn’t buy it, because the other book by the four authors was not to my liking at all. Caroline de Maigret, Sophie Mas, Anne Berest and Audrey Diwan wrote “How to be Parisian, wherever you are” first. Shallow, provocative, pointed and superficial was my harsh judgement. A woman who followed the ideas given by the book would have been very unappealing to me, no wish here to have her as a friend or to try the authors advice out myself. I should mention that the book was a bestseller – seems a lot of women thought differently.
“Older, but Better, but Older” in comparison is incredibly witty, because everyone around 40 or older recognizes the comical and sometimes hair-raising situations described by the authors. In a “Vogue” article, still online and easy to find when you google the book, Caroline de Maigret said the first book was a fantasy and the second one was based on reality. That captures it perfectly.
The funniest thing about the book are the situations the authors collected, when you suddenly realize you are not young anymore.
You have to scroll down endlessly to find your birth year when filling in an online form?
You have no idea who all those famous singers and dancers are that hop around without elegance, making howling sounds?
You just want to get home instead of staying at the party?
You cringe when a colleague says he/she was born in the year you started to work?
Those quips and many more make the book truly entertaining. The overall conclusion of the authors, that they would not want to be 20 again, and that they have a much better life now, is made honest by the second “but Older”.
Wouldn’t it be nice to know everything we do know now and have the lithe young body of 20 years ago? To be called “Mademoiselle” in a Paris Café instead of “Madame”? It’s the small things that hurt, especially when you really can’t see the difference in the mirror yourself!!!
It’s the others that make feel us old, not we ourselves. I have sometimes contemplated to ask a much younger colleague what makes me old in their eyes. Maybe I really do it next year. The answer is not important, but it would be interesting to know.
Becoming 40 or 50 shows you that you have not reached every goal you made with 20. I wonder if anybody did, although there are guys like Emmanuel Macron who became French President with 40. Or all those stars who are millionaires with 20 or 25 and world famous. Not all of them became alcohol addicts to help us common people feel better.
To accept that they are where they are, and you are where you are, is the most important lesson in life. Live your life as good as you can, don’t compare, there are always bigger fish. The more you are dependent on other people’s opinions and their judgement the more insecure you get. I mean not as an actress, where other people really decide if you are invited to a casting or not at all, that is certainly very bad. I speak of the rest of us. Us who only assume the neighbours or colleagues might think something because we want to be seen in a certain way by them. That unhealthy trait we should try to grow out of. Make yourself happy, be content, because everything you have is good, when being objective. Don’t expect anybody else to make you happy. It is your job; you are responsible for yourself. I guess there is not much more to it.
The authors collected many nice anecdotes. Them being part of the chic French fashion world is reassuring. It is not the only good book about getting older, but it is a very good read indeed.
All rights to the book belong to:
De Maigret, Caroline / Mas, Sophie / Berest, Anne / Diwan, Audrey: Older, But Better, But Older, 2019, Doubleday, New York. This text is based on the unpublished French original, in English and German translation, published by btb Verlag (owned Random House GmbH), Munich, Germany, Printed in Germany, ISBN: 978-3-442-75831-9
I am unsure here, the latter two authors are not named on the book cover, only in the full captions. I hope that my way of citing does justice to all.